Congratulations to Dr. Cindy Gauthier, recipient of The Rick and Amanda Hansen Fellowship, in Partnership with the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation and the Rick Hansen Institute

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26 November 2018

Dr. Cindy Gauthier is the recipient of The Rick and Amanda Hansen Fellowship, in Partnership with the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation and the Rick Hansen Institute. Her research will focus on the use of functional electrical stimulation to improve balance and hand/arm function in people with SCI.

The research project entitled, “Assessment of orthotic and therapeutic effects of functional electrical stimulation during meaningful functional tasks training program in people with spinal cord injury” will be conducted under the mentorship of Dr. Kristin Musselman.

Funding for the ONF-RHI Partnership is made possible by support from the Government of Ontario.

Dr. Cindy Gauthier

Dr Cindy Gauthier, a physical therapist who graduated from Université de Montréal, has many years of experience in spinal cord injury research. During her undergraduate studies, she studied multidirectional seated postural stability in individuals with spinal cord injury as a summer research intern at the Pathokinesiology Laboratory under the supervision of Dr Dany Gagnon. She continued her study on postural stability during her master's degree for which she received a scholarship from the Fonds de la recherche du Québec en santé (FRQS). Then, she completed her doctoral degree at the School of Rehabilitation of the Université de Montréal under the supervision Dr Dany Gagnon and Dr Audrey L. Hicks of McMaster University in December 2017. Her thesis work focused on cardiorespiratory fitness assessment and training among manual wheelchair users as she proposed a new cardiorespiratory fitness test using a treadmill and assessed the feasibility and safety of a community-based high-intensity interval wheelchair training program. She was awarded with a doctoral training fellowship for health professionals from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and one from the FRQS. She published 11 manuscripts in peer-reviewed scientific journals and one article on use of technologies in neurological rehabilitation in a physiotherapy newspaper.

We wish her success in her postdoctoral research in the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Toronto.